Mirror Rescues

The Haitian husband hangs around the crumpled bank

hoping his wife who worked there is still alive.

He hushes the noisy crowd around there and calls her name.

She answers. But there’s no way to get to her.

Finally the rescue team comes,

dropping a mirror down

into the darkness of the collapse.

Her face appears, just a little bruised.

“Are you injured?” the rescue worker asks in French.

“My fingers are crushed,” she said.

In the mirror the whole world can see

how they are pinned under a fallen beam.

Release them and she can be moved

out from under the collapsed building.

In a little while she is brought out and

driven away sitting in the front seat of the ambulance.

Miracle enough. But there’s an even greater miracle.

All of us have built into us inner mirrors that can show us

just that clearly what has us pinned internally;

what’s been sitting on our tails.

Being living mirrors, they can also show us at the same time

the exact moves we can make

to release ourselves from being

stuck in some untenable position for life.

Now becoming known as eidetic images

these inner motion picture mirrors

– when we look into them with sufficient care –

let us see our way clear of what has befallen us.

“Yes!” my inner voice says crisply, with a little excited jump.